Living Beyond: Making Sense of Near Death Experiences

Angie Fenimore’s 1 NDE

Angie’s NDE is a longer, more comprehensive report than most who have committed suicide. It fleshes out important issues on the subject, and allows us to enter profoundly into her experiences. She kindly gave me an interview that helped me to prepare this account. If you want a much deeper sense of her experiences, read her excellent book or see her on YouTube.

Angie’s Background

Her mother left home when Angie was just 9 years old. She had to care for the family – cook, clean and provide mothering for her little sister as best she could. Her father was an alcoholic who was lost in his own despair and ill-equipped to care for two little girls. Worse still, as time went by, she experienced sexual abuse. She put up with this to protect her sister. After these episodes she would cuddle her dolls in bed and feel utterly worthless and unlovable.

She married early at 19, but within a week her husband had yanked her off the ground by her hair. Years of abuse continued. Angie suffered a broken tooth and a broken nose, but the emotional abuse she endured was far more damaging. She eventually succumbed to addictions and behaviours that were contrary to her beliefs in abstaining from alcohol and drugs and relations outside of marriage. Angie had two boys of her own, but could not escape the inner feelings of self-loathing that trapped her. She believed that she had no control over her behaviour, her thoughts and her emotions and fell into a dark depression. She felt she would be doing her husband and children a favour by taking her own life.

When Angie was a teenager, her stepmother told Angie how, after a serious car accident, she had floated above her body in the emergency room. She heard the doctors saying that the family should be gathered because she likely would not survive. She was then enveloped in a warm and loving light filled with peace. Loved ones who had passed on met her in the light as she hovered above her body. They told her that it was not her time but that she could choose. She was told that if she returned, her life would be difficult. She chose to come back.

To Angie, this peaceful bliss sounded superb and thoughts of suicide became more urgent. She twice put a loaded shotgun in her mouth but did not pull the trigger. ‘If I had, I would not have been able to return to my body after my NDE,’ she remarks today.

At the age of 26, in January 1991, she slit her wrists and then swallowed nearly every drug in the medicine cabinet.

Angie’s Life Review

Her NDE began in the classic fashion with an awareness of her spirit separating from her body. She was not taken to the brilliant glories of Paradise, however, but remained in darkness. She noticed a large screen in front of her on which a 3D slide show of her life began playing out chronologically in vivid detail, beginning in her mother’s birth canal followed by her birth. She experienced her delighted mother cupping Angie’s head in her hand.

What seemed strange as the images flew past was her adult understanding of each person who appeared on the screen – what they were thinking and feeling at the time, even those in the room when she had been a baby. ‘I knew how each person felt who had ever interacted with me.’

Despite being totally captivated by the events shown on the screen and the emotions that they evoked, she became aware of a supportive ‘presence’ with her, without actually seeing who or what this presence was. She knew that he was male and that he knew her and loved her.

The pictures rushed along until she saw herself dead, lying on the couch. Then, just as suddenly as they had started, the pictures stopped.

The Sorting Ground.

Angie searched the darkness. Where was she? Darkness enveloped her, not the wonderful, warm light she had anticipated. The darkness continued in all directions and seemed to have no end. ‘It was an endless Void,’ she concluded. In spite of being surrounded by absolute darkness, she could see on a heightened level. To her right, standing shoulder to shoulder, was a line of teenagers. Otherworldly intuition kicked in and Angie deduced that they were suicides like herself.

‘With a laugh, I opened my mouth, but before I could form the words, they came tumbling out, “We must be the suicides.” I wasn’t sure whether I had thought the words or had attempted to say them, but they were audible without my having to move my lips.’

But had the others waiting in line heard her telepathic message? They showed no emotion if so. Then the lad next to her slowly turned and looked blankly at her before turning to look forward again. He had heard her, but there had been no expression on his face, no warmth or friendliness. He returned to looking ahead in a transfixed stupor.

Angie saw a girl towards the end of the line, who looked to be about 16 years old. Might she respond? Angie drew a blank. ‘She was just like the rest of them, her empty gaze fixed on nothing, staring blankly forward. They were all dead, and so was I!’

Without warning, Angie felt herself being pulled away by an unknown force, leaving the line of teenagers behind.

The Prison

Angie found herself deposited in a shadowy realm stretching as far as she could see. There were people there, apparently mumbling to themselves because she could observe no communication taking place between them. They appeared to be caught up in their own misery to the exclusion of making connection with anyone else. They stood, squatted or wandered aimlessly about.

Men and women of all ages were trapped there, but one observation struck her – there were no children.

With growing alarm as she looked around. She became convinced that this was a place where suicides were imprisoned.

The old man closest to her was in a pathetic, filthy condition, squatting on the ground and apparently resigned to his fate. He appeared to have ceased thinking altogether and took no notice of anything around him. ‘He was completely drained, just waiting.’ She felt his trapped soul had been there a very long time. ‘In this dark Prison, a day might as well be a thousand days or a thousand years.’ She even wondered whether he could be one of the most famous suicides in history – Judas Iscariot. Then she felt embarrassed for the thought, in case he had picked it up. If he did, he showed no sign of it but continued his hopeless, impassive waiting.

It struck Angie’s restless, probing thought processes that this was a land of nothing – no love, no privacy, no sleep, no friends, no light, no growth, no happiness, no relief, no television, no books – no access to knowledge and no way to use it. It was an empty world, where no connections could be made. It was not how she had imagined suicide would be.

Angie found the solitude oppressive and terrifying. Her sense of being alone and helpless seemed to burgeon. How many eons would she remain in this awful condition?

Enter the Father

A commanding voice rang out and crashed over Angie like a gigantic wave. The voice expressed a strange mixture – ferocious anger, but also love at the same time, like an angry parent.

Angie cowered. ‘The darkness vibrated. Every particle of darkness reverberated with the words, “This is God.” I knew there was infinite power in that voice.’

‘Is this what you really want?’

This great voice emanated from a pinpoint of light that swelled with each thunderous word until it hung like a radiant sun just beyond the black wall of mist that formed my Prison.

Though far more brilliant than the sun, the light soothed my eyes with its deep and pure white luminescence… I knew with complete certainty that I was in the presence of God. I didn’t need to be told.

He was a Being of Light, not just radiating light or illuminated from within, but he almost seemed to be made of the light. It was a light that had substance and dimension, the most beautiful, glorious substance that I have ever beheld. All beauty, all love, all goodness were contained in the light that poured forth from this Being.

There is nothing that we are even capable of imagining that comes close to the magnitude of perfect love that this Being poured into me.

Angie became aware that none of the other suicides had heard the voice. The man closest to her could see that she was focused on something, but it was apparent that he couldn’t hear anything. Others continued to babble unaware.

Then God spoke again. His words were excruciating.

‘Is this what you really want? Don’t you know that this is the worst thing you could have done? You can’t take your own life; it’s not yours to take.’

I could feel his anger and frustration, both because I’d thrown in the towel, and because I had cut myself off from him and from his guidance.

Angie felt she needed to express to God how trapped she’d felt, and that she had seen no other choice but to die. So she responded, ‘But my life is so hard!’

Her thoughts were not even completed before his response came.

‘You think that was hard? It is nothing compared to what awaits you if you take your life.’

When the Father spoke, each of his words exploded into a complex of meanings, like fireworks, tiny balls of light that erupted into a billion bits of information, filling me with streams of vivid truth. I was filled with pure understanding about the purpose of life. He continued:

‘Life’s supposed to be hard. You can’t skip over parts.’

Enter Jesus

Suddenly Angie felt another presence alongside the Father, the same presence that had stood by her during her Life Review. Similar to the Father, this presence was now radiating light such that she could see him. She discovered that he too streamed love towards her. She thought she could perceive a difference, though.

This love was as pure and potent as the Father’s, but it had an entirely new dimension of pure compassion, of complete and perfect empathy.

I felt that he not only understood my life and my pains exactly, as if he had actually lived my life, but that he knew everything about how to guide me through it; how my different choices could produce either more bitterness or new growth.

Having thought all my life that no one could possibly understand what I had been through, I was now aware that there was one other person who truly did.

Through this empathy ran a deep vein of sorrow. He ached, he truly grieved for the pain I had endured, but even more for my failure to seek his comfort. His greatest desire was to help me. He mourned my blindness as a mother would mourn a dead child.

Suddenly she knew that she was in the presence of Jesus Christ. He spoke to Angie through the veil of darkness.

‘Don’t you understand? I have done this for you.’

As she expresses it, her spiritual eyes were opened. In that moment she was suddenly inside Christ’s body, taken back in time and experiencing, from Christ’s point of view what transpired in the Garden of Gethsemane. As if it was happening in that moment, Angie experienced Christ experiencing her life, living her entire life, as if it was His own life. She began to see what it was that the Saviour had actually achieved, how he had sacrificed himself for her. ‘He showed me: he had taken me into himself, subsumed my life in his, embracing my experiences, my sufferings, as his own.’

Angie perceived where she had gone wrong. She had heard many times about Jesus before her NDE, and had hoped that there was truth to the idea of a Saviour who had given his life for her, but had been afraid to really believe it. To believe without seeing requires a great deal of trust. Her trust had been violated so many times in her life that she had very little to spare. She had clung to her pain so tightly that she had been willing to suicide rather than to believe he cared for her. ‘He had wanted to comfort me and to hold me, but we were separated by my responses to the lessons of life. He had been there for me all through my life, but I had not trusted Him, until now.’

Teachings

Angie was then provided with new understanding and knowledge.

Amongst many other things, she learned that suicide produces a ripple effect, with harmful long-term ramifications remaining for those left on Earth. Her children, for example, would be greatly harmed by her suicide. She was given a glimpse of their potential futures. By abandoning her earthly responsibilities, her oldest son in particular would make harmful choices in his turn. ‘I caught a glimpse of how deeply God loves my boys, and how, with my callous disregard for their welfare, I was tampering with the sacred will of God.’ She still tears up when she talks about the damage she would have caused her boys.

The same applied to many others, such as her husband and her sister.

Angie still could not see how she could live her own life, but having seen what would become of her children, she uttered a hint of a response, ‘Okay.” Suddenly she found herself hovering above the dark plane. One gift to her of her NDE was to rekindle the desire to live and love again.

She was told that the realm of darkness where she had been sent was quite literally a spiritual time-out, a place where she was supposed to grasp the gravity of her offences.

‘But I had to ask, why me? Why was it that I could see God while the vacant husk of a man next to me could not? Why was I absorbing light and being taught, while he was hunkering down in misery and darkness?’

The answer was unexpected. It revolved around willingness. When she had wondered whether the shell of the man beside her might be Judas Iscariot, she had shown she was willing to believe that Christ had once walked the Earth, lived and died. And once willing to believe, she was able to begin accepting what she was being shown. ‘My spiritual time-out could have lasted a moment, or it could have taken me thousands of years to progress out of that dark Prison, depending on when I reached the point of willingness to see the light.’

The Escape

With this teaching, her spiritual eyes were opened and she suddenly saw beings of light all around her that had been invisible to her previously.

Angie found herself floating above the field of darkness and entered into a realm of scurrying spirits of light. She learnt that they were preparing for the return of Jesus Christ to Earth in the not too distant future, but she was not told when precisely.

She was filled with understanding and knowledge, everything she would need to complete her mortal existence.

Then the powerful energy source that had transported Angie to the dark Prison returned to liberate her. A rushing sensation engulfed her, and suddenly she was back in her body on Earth, lying on the couch.

Reflections

With the opportunity to reflect since her NDE more than twenty years ago, Angie has decided her state of mind had imprisoned her on Earth long before she had entered that dark Prison in the afterlife. The more she had entertained gloomy thoughts to the point of acting on them, the more her darkness had influenced and harmed those around her. Furthermore, the Prince of Darkness, Satan, had manipulated and encouraged her suicidal thoughts. The Prison section for her and those who were like her was a natural consequence, a gathering of ‘like with like’. Her sufferings and torment had been magnified in that Prison environment where there was no escape from her situation except by divine intervention.

Knowing that forgiveness is important, Angie has forgiven and sought reconciliation with each person who damaged her before her suicide, including her father who had abused her, her mother who had abandoned her and her husband who had treated her so badly.

Today Angie is a spokesperson against suicide, and travels widely to teach and to warn others against taking their own lives. ‘Don’t do it. Talk to someone, talk to me, or get into counselling. Medicine has come a long way since my suicide. Seek medical help. If someone in your life is depressed, you must reach out. A person who is suicidal cannot always seek help. We must take responsibility for each other.’

Angie also feels that it is important to share that her near-death experience was exclusive to her. People who have lost loved ones to suicide should not assume that they went to a place of darkness during their NDE. Just as Angie’s experiences were influenced by her own thoughts and beliefs, she believes that we continue to affect our circumstances during the NDE. She often prays for those who have died by suicide; she prays for their families to forgive them.

During her NDE, Angie saw that prayer and forgiveness are the most powerful tools for good that can be accessed by human beings.

Many people commit suicide during deep depression. One of life’s challenges may be to learn how to cope with depression, or to overcome it. An overwhelming desire to commit suicide is one of the biggest indicators of clinical depression. As Angie points out, seeking medical help is a smart decision, as is attending support groups – if one group or counsellor has not been helpful, try others.

It is heartening to know, as Angie Fenimore attests both from her own experience and from counselling others who have attempted suicide, that an afterlife experience definitely discourages further attempts at suicide.

David Rosen  15 in 1975 interviewed 7 of the 10 known survivors who had jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. Most striking perhaps is that each claimed to have had a spiritual experience that had subsequently transformed their lives. Consequently, none had again wished to commit suicide.